[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[June 27, 1994]
[Pages 1153-1157]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in New York City
June 27, 1994

    Thank you very much. Boy, he was hot tonight, wasn't he? [Laughter] 
I think he's great. Thank you, Chairman Wilhelm, for your outstanding 
leadership and for your extraordinary

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work on behalf of our candidates around the country. And thank you, 
Senator Bradley, for being here with us tonight and for your work on 
this event and for your steadfast effort to get a health care bill out 
of the Senate Finance Committee that actually protects the American 
people's health care. Thank you, Senator Lautenberg, for your 
friendship, your support, and your leadership. And I want to ask all of 
you here to help him be reelected to the Senate in New Jersey this year. 
We need him back there.
    In addition to all the dignitaries from New York, I understand that 
we have two Democratic congressional candidates from New Jersey, and 
maybe you could raise your hands. They're up front--Frank Herbert. Here 
you are, Frank. Shine a light on that man; he's running for office. 
[Laughter] And Lou Magazzu, are you here? There you are, Lou, it's good 
to see you.
    Ladies and gentlemen, when I was nominated for President by Governor 
Cuomo, I thought he gave one of the best speeches I ever heard. And 
about halfway through it, I looked at Hillary and I said, ``Who's he 
talking about anyway?'' [Laughter] By the time he got through that 
speech, I felt like a real President. [Laughter] And tonight I am also 
in his debt for his wonderful words, for his profound way of telling the 
truth, for his leadership in New York, and for his love for New York.
    People ask me sometimes--kind of cynics, who don't know what it's 
like to really love where you're from--how Mario Cuomo could be doing 
this again. And I said, I may be the only person in America that 
understands this, but if I hadn't been just absolutely obsessed with the 
direction the country was taking in 1992 and convinced it was wrong, I'd 
still be Governor of my State. It's the best job in the world if you're 
lucky enough to be in a place where you love. And he loves this State. 
He loves you, and you ought to keep him doing what he's doing.
    I also want to say, I'm glad to see all the musicians here with all 
their talent. I hope I get to hear a little music before I have to go 
tonight. But there's really nothing for me to say; Mario said it all. 
[Laughter] Ditto, I could say.
    Let me say the stakes this year are very high because they will 
determine the extent to which and the shape of our continued forward 
progress. When I was elected President, we'd had 12 years of exploding 
deficits. And I knew we had to bring the deficit down, we had to bring 
interest rates down, we had to get investment up in our people, we had 
to put the American people first again. And we came up with a plan, with 
the help of a lot of people from New York, including my National 
Economic Adviser, Bob Rubin, that would do those things.
    And when I say--well, maybe it sounds good but it's not human 
sometimes to say, we had the biggest deficit reduction in history; we're 
going to have 3 years of deficit reduction in a row for the first time 
since Harry Truman was President of the United States; we've had two 
budgets passed on time for the first time in 17 years; last year we had 
the first year without a Presidential veto in 60 years. And you say, 
well, what does all that mean? I'll tell you what it means: 3.4 million 
of your fellow Americans have jobs that they didn't have. That's what it 
means.
    Sixteen million American taxpayers with children, who work for a 
living, are going to get an income tax cut out of our economic plan, so 
they'll be encouraged to stay working and not go on welfare--16 million 
of them. Twenty million students are eligible, 20 million students are 
eligible for low-interest-rate loans and better repayment terms under 
the student loan program because we changed that, so no one will ever 
have an excuse that ``The cost is too much, and I can't go to college'' 
again. Ninety percent of the small businesses in this country, under 
that economic program, were eligible for a tax cut. All they had to do 
was invest more money in their business, hire more people, and make this 
economy grow. Five and a half million Americans refinanced their homes 
because the interest rates went down. And the automobile industry is now 
booming. I just came back from St. Louis; in the previous 4 years they 
lost 2,000 jobs. In the first year of our administration, they gained 
28,000 as automobiles in America came back. That's what it means. It's a 
human deal.
    How many million people, we'll never know, under the Family and 
Medical Leave Act, are now able to take a little time off when their 
baby's born or when their parents are sick? We'll never know. We know 
that thousands of lives will be saved because of the Brady bill. We know 
that; we have evidence of that. We know that because of that assault 
weapons ban, police will be able to go out on the street with a little 
more confidence that they won't be

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outgunned by the people they're supposed to protect the rest of us from. 
We know that. These are real things that affect the real lives of real 
people.
    Is it easy? No. It's not easy to break habits of gridlock that, 
frankly, are the province not just of the other party, which says no a 
lot of the time, but of the cumbersome procedures which grip Washington. 
But we've been working on it. The world trade agreement, GATT, hung 
around for 7 years. We're going to ratify it this year. The family leave 
law hung around for 7 years and got vetoed twice. It's now the law. The 
Brady bill took 7 years, but it passed. The assault weapons ban--to give 
you an idea of how difficult change is, we had for the assault weapons 
ban, all the living former Presidents, every police organization in the 
United States of America, and this President working as hard as he 
could, and we beat the NRA by two votes. It is not easy to change.
    But we're doing it. We're breaking gridlock. We're making changes. 
It's affecting people's lives in ways that are profound and important. 
And a lot of it involves not just the Government doing something for 
somebody but empowering people to do something for themselves. That's 
what a better student loan program is. That's what our national service 
program is.
    Governor Cuomo's son, Andrew, now a leader and Assistant Secretary 
of Housing and Urban Development, has been a leader in empowering 
people, starting with the homeless to the people in public housing, to 
live safe, constructive lives. We're trying to change the rules. No more 
Government handouts but Government handups, real partnerships, real 
community building, really trying to help people take control of their 
own lives.
    These things matter to real people. And the American people are 
beginning to sense this. And the more they sense it, the more we'll be 
able to cut through the fog and let the clear sky show and the more 
we'll be able to run on what we have done for the American people to 
help them help themselves. It's going to make a real difference in the 
life of this country.
    Oh, there are all kinds of problems. Americans have a well-known 
cynicism for Government. My senior Senator back home used to say that 
half the American people are convinced the Government would mess up a 
one-car parade. [Laughter] And that's true. But you know something? We 
do some things pretty well.
    The Republicans talked about bringing down the deficit. We did it. 
They talked about generating economic growth. We contributed to that. 
They talked about having less Government. You know, they always 
complained about that. But when our budgets are implemented, we will 
reduce over 5 years the National Government by a quarter of a million 
people, not by firing people but by attrition. We'll use all the savings 
to pay for that crime bill to put another 100,000 police officers on the 
streets of New York and the other cities of this country.
    We'll have the smallest Federal Government since John Kennedy was 
President. It'll be producing more work, and the American people will be 
safer on their streets. That is the kind of thing that we ought to do. 
We can make Government work for ordinary people in ways that make sense 
and change lives.
    But let me say, everything I have tried to do to empower people to 
get the economy going, to make Government work for ordinary people 
again, all of those things are embodied in this struggle to provide 
health care to all Americans. And it isn't easy. People have been trying 
to do it for 60 years. Roosevelt wanted to do it; Truman wanted to do 
it. President Nixon--President Nixon proposed requiring employers and 
employees to buy health insurance. President Carter tried to do it. I 
believe we can get it done.
    And so we worked. We have worked for months and months and months. 
We worked for 9 months and involved thousands and thousands of people to 
put together a proposal. And then I said, okay, here's my proposal; 
where's yours? It won't be right for everybody. Surely, there's some 
things that can be improved about it. I went out and listened to the 
American people. They said, do a little more for small business and make 
sure you're going to protect small business, and make it a little less 
regulatory. And trust the American people to take more voluntary actions 
at work, but make sure you cover everybody. So we made some changes, and 
we did that.
    And there are now bills on the floor of the House and the Senate for 
the first time ever in the whole history of the Republic that would 
cover all Americans with health care. There never even was a bill on the 
floor of the Congress before, ever. And it's there.
    But the forces of opposition are very strong. We were talking at 
dinner how the great Italian

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political theorist, Machiavelli, said 500 years ago there was nothing so 
difficult in all of human affairs than to change the established order 
of things. Why? Because the people that lose know it, and they fight you 
like crazy. And the people that are going to win are never quite sure 
you can deliver the goods. And so they're often not there in the 
trenches.
    Today we had over 100 distinguished doctors and medical personnel 
from all over America, including many from New York City, representing 
the academic health centers of America. And a brilliant doctor stood up 
and said, you know, people say they wish to protect what's best about 
American health care and fix what's wrong, but they're afraid they will 
mess it up if they try to fix it. He said you can no longer protect 
what's best unless you fix what's wrong. Unless we finally join the 
ranks of all other advanced countries and provide health care to 
everybody, we're not going to be able to afford to keep our finest 
medical centers going, training the finest doctors and nurses and 
medical professionals. He said they run ads against the President's 
program, saying that if you cover everybody you will ration health care. 
Tell that to the 39 million Americans that don't have any health care. 
They are rationed.
    I say that to make this point. We can pass health care reform this 
year, but it's going to require everything that all these other things 
did: breaking gridlock, defeating special interests, arguing for a 
future, and asking people to work toward that future and making 
Government work for ordinary people, not to give them anything but to 
permit them to access a system that will enable people to take care of 
themselves and their families.
    I spend a lot of time talking to laboring groups of people, saying, 
I'm trying to make change your friend and not your enemy; support my 
trade policies. Yes, it'll change the economy more and you'll have to 
change jobs more often, but we'll be more prosperous and we'll provide 
lifetime training policies for you. And here are all these things I'm 
trying to do to change our education and training policies to make 
change your friend.
    But I just want to tell you folks, I met two kids today when I came 
to New York. Whenever I go to a city, I try to let the Make-A-Wish 
Foundation or some other group bring some children to see me who are 
sick and who have health problems. And one of these children had a 
condition that may be fatal, but it's been in remission for a couple 
years--12-year-old boy, just graduated at the top of his class in 
elementary school here in New York City. He may have a good, long, 
healthy life, but I'm telling you, if his parents lost their jobs, what 
would he do for health care? And if they tried to get another job, could 
they get health coverage for a child like that? I met a 17-year-old 
boy--Mayor Dinkins, you can be proud of this--who was wheelchair-bound, 
has been all his life, has a severe muscular disorder from childhood--
very bright young man, computer expert, wanted to write me on the White 
House E-mail, and I told him I was too dumb to use it, but I'd read it 
if he sent it. [Laughter] And he gave me a letter he prepared about 
obstacles for handicapped children and what his life was going to be 
like. And he said, ``You know, this wheelchair of mine cost,'' I think 
he said, ``$15,000.'' And he said his parents were immigrants, both of 
them were immigrants. And he said, ``Because my mother works for the 
city of New York, our family has been able to maintain a middle class 
lifestyle because our health policy pays for 80 percent of my bills. But 
it's been hard even for us. I had expensive surgery. I have this 
expensive wheelchair; I'll have to replace it soon.'' But he said, ``So 
many of my young friends are almost destitute who are physically 
handicapped because of the conditions that exist.''
    And if we were getting a good deal, the rest of us, that would be 
fine, but your country's spending 40 percent more on health care than 
any other country in the world. And it is only because we have refused 
to discipline ourselves to provide health care to everybody, like all 
our competitors do, that these stories are out there. We can do better. 
But we have to believe. We have to fight those who say we cannot do it. 
We can turn this economy around. If we can bring this deficit down, when 
nobody thought we could do it, if we can break gridlock, we can do this 
too.
    I just ask you to look at these people on this stage and remember 
this, this is the only thing that really counts: I ran for this job 
because I wanted to do what I could with the power vested by the framers 
of our Constitution in the Presidency to change the lives of ordinary 
Americans for the better. There is no other purpose. And anything, 
anything that diverts, divides, distracts, or destroys the spirit and 
the

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purpose of the American people, when we have so much on our plate here 
at home and around the world, is not good. And anything that unifies and 
makes us believe in ourselves and makes us better and gives our children 
a chance to have a better future is good. That is what we represent. 
That is why your contributions are well invested tonight. That is why I 
ask for your help to do everything you can to help us pass health care 
this year, help us keep reform going, and help the voters reward the 
forces of change and progress and humanity and unity in the elections 
this fall.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9:37 p.m. in the Imperial Ballroom at the 
Sheraton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to David Wilhelm, chairman, 
Democratic National Committee, and Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York.